10 Things I Would Have Blogged About Had I Blogged Throughout August

10 Things I Would Have Blogged About Had I Blogged Throughout August

August is hours away from ending, and my attempt at an escape from the internets is over. Here’s a rundown of what would have been had I not turned down the lights on The Lost Boy for the past 30 days:

1. “Scott Pilgrim” vs. my heart.With its smorgasbord of Toronto in-jokes and Toronto landmarks playing actual Toronto landmarks, watching “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” was akin to the first time I ever saw a mainstream movie with non-offensively represented gay dudes: “Look, it’s someone like me, in a Hollywood movie!” And thankfully there was a clever, sweet and endlessly entertaining movie to go along with that feeling. And one that, oddly enough, included one of the least offensive queer characters Hollywood’s ever given us. I’m certain its box office turkeydom suggests its destined for cult classic status, and even if it that doesn’t happen, my cinematic summer 2010 will always be remembered as the one where “Scott Pilgrim” won my heart.

2. I knew “Inception” felt kinda familar.A film that didn’t so much win my heart (and irked me more and more as days passed and plot holes became more clear) totally ripped off Scrooge McDuck.

3. Congratulations to my little brother for finishing university in the midst of a shitty, shitty summer.In what was one the weirdest summers in Toronto history (the G20 fiasco, crazy heatwaves, bedbug epidemics, a fucking earthquake), my brother deserves serious kudos for managing to finish his B.A. despite a bursting appendix, a botched surgery, a full-time job, and living in the middle of a city that was going a bit nuts.

6. Gay men known for their television work need to stop making big budget Hollywood “women’s pictures.”“Sex and the City 2” and “Eat Pray Love” were among the very few mainstream options geared toward women this summer, and sadly both of them were more or less pieces of uninspired, shallow garbage. Besides featuring whiny, overprivileged women, the two films share one interesting commonality: they were both written and directed by gay men. Now, I know I need to be careful here, and let me say first and foremost I obviously have nothing against gay men directing female-led films, AND that it’s worked out many a time in the past. But Michael Patrick King and Ryan Murphy are also both TV dudes, and it shows when they try to make movies (Murphy also ruined one of my favourite memoirs of all time a few years ago). Maybe ignorant Hollywood execs figure hiring a gay man to direct a “woman’s film” is the same as letting a woman direct them. But if last summer’s far superior female-oriented (and female directed) Hollywood duo “The Proposal” and “Julie & Julia” have anything to say about it, maybe its best to give women more chances to make these films themselves.

7. Fuck Starz for cancelling the amazing “Party Down.” This summer, I finally got into cater-waiter series “Party Down,” a hilarious lovechild of “Freaks and Geeks” and “Arrested Development” that Starz had to go and cancel after 20 episodes (of which I watched entirely in three days). If you haven’t experienced it, please do so this Labour Day weekend:

8. Toronto, please dear god don’t elect Rob Ford for mayor. And this website to stop you from doing so is amazing.Scarier than SARS, the G20 police conflict and the design of the new ROM combined, the very real potential that dumb, homophobic, racist lardass Rob Ford is about to come Toronto’s mayor has filled my past few months with dread. No matter what stupid and offensive thing he says or does (“No more immigrants!” “Bikers killed on the road have it coming!” “AIDS is for queers and drug abusers!” “Oriental people work like dogs!), Ford’s poll numbers ain’t dropping, and me and a dozen of my friends are already planning a mass exodus to Montreal come November.

9. Congratulations to my two of my all-time favourite lesbians on their nupitals.You know who you are.

10. The “Burlesque” trailer arrived.Thankfully, Eugene blogged about it in my absence, but maybe its time to re-experience a tease of the gayest thing to hit Thanksgiving, since, well, this Bea Arthur Thanksgiving special in 1980: